Blue Banana Interview with Author and Musician Forrest Lonefight

From the underground worlds of horror fiction, Native storytelling, heavy music, and working-class Americana comes author Forrest Lonefight - a writer whose voice feels as raw and unfiltered as the Iowa backroads and construction sites that shape his stories. Known for his latest novel The Pipelayer, Lonefight blends blue-collar realism with dread, addiction, identity, and the strange shadows that linger beneath everyday life. His work doesn’t feel manufactured or polished for mainstream audiences; it feels lived in. Weathered. Real.

What makes Lonefight especially compelling is the way he merges Indigenous perspectives, Midwestern grit, underground music culture, and psychological horror into something uniquely his own. There’s a heaviness to his writing that recalls late-night highway drives, rusted machinery, dive bars, isolation, and the feeling that something ancient might still be buried beneath the surface of America. Beyond literature, Lonefight is also a musician and artist, bringing the same intensity and atmosphere into his creative work. 

Forrest Lonefight is so much more than a musician and an author. 

As the guitar player for the Des Moines band The Maw, Forrest opened my eyes to a hungry and vibrant music scene in Central Iowa. He was a huge inspiration for my previous blog, Bigfoot Diaries (BFD), a project that predominately covered music. I have told friends that Forrest is the greatest guitar player that I've ever seen live. I meant it 100%. I still do. 

Blue Banana was honored to speak with Forrest about his books, Iowa, horror, Native identity, music, creative inspiration, and the darker corners of storytelling that continue to pull readers deeper into his world.

Growing up Meskwaki in lowa, were there stories, beliefs, or legends you heard as a kid that stayed with you long after childhood?

My grandma was a great storyteller. She had a way of telling stories. One story she told was of a gambler who would gamble with a dead man. That zombie creature would rise in the middle of the night to gamble with him, lose one of his valuable burial adornments for two nights in a row, then on the third night, the whole cemetery of zombies were waiting for the gambler. They chased him back to his village and tore his family to shreds. That was a cautionary tale. Respect the dead, which was always a customary thing growing up on the Meskwaki Settlement.

How does Meskwaki tradition shape the way you think about creativity, inspiration, or artistic responsibility?

There was a lot of room to play on the Settlement. I was living the real life Zelda. Exploring, finding secret grottos in the woods and pretend-fighting with Octorocks and Leevers in the woods. That’s probably were my imagination bloomed, before anything else. Meskwaki tradition had nothing to do with my inspiration per se. It was a patriarchal society full of rules. I was excluded for the most part and got bullied a lot. My family was ostracized for my grandparent’s Christian beliefs; that’s something I would find out later in life. I’ve always wondered why most Meskwakis never liked me! (Haha!)

I did admire the way that the Meskwaki were a hidden society away from mainstream Iowa. So, that fact opened my eyes to how our country was being run. I was able to see and navigate the complexities of America’s problems and saw the gray areas in the middle of the Reagan’s “Moral Majority” regime days.

Are there certain landscapes in Iowa that still feel spiritually charged to you - places that seem to carry stories?

The hills. The bluffs. Along the river valley. I included a story in my book that takes place along a beaver dam that runs along the Iowa River. I heard stories that a lot of people were buried down there. You would hear different things about that area over the years. But who knows? It is a legitimately dangerous place and I do recall a death of a man in the 2000’s. The legends grow over time.

Is there a difference between the stories told in your books and the stories you tell through guitar?

Well, my last book, Life Belongs to the Loud, was a direct correlated work. I melded those two things together to make a pretty good story. Epic. If I die tomorrow, that’s my testament to music. They are both different modes of expression. Most times they are better left to their own designs, but one can be ambitious and promiscuous just as long as it’s killer in the end!

What do books allow you to express that music can’t - and vice versa?

I was a writer first. At 7 years old, it came to me first. You can make the most mundane situation in the world and make it into something like a Kafka and Dostoevsky novel. Music is much more ethereal. Or I’ll say it like this; Writing is corporeal, music is spiritual. In my Libra mind, one needs a balance of both in order to achieve the great work of life.

Do you think modern audiences misunderstand Indigenous folklore by treating it like fantasy rather than lived belief?

Every culture has their own stories. What’s cool is that many tribes share the same ones. The more Natives I meet, the more I see the things we have in common. Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Meskwaki, even Lakota (our supposed mortal enemies haha) have the same words and culture. Every culture has merit in the human experience, no matter who has the biggest gun.

The show "Reservation Dogs" opened a lot of eyes in the mainstream. It showed that Natives weren’t all just downtrodden tragic apparitions of society. Natives love to laugh and yes, make fun of each other too.

Are there myths or spirits from Meskwaki lore that deserve wider recognition outside Indigenous communities?

Meskwaki got bigfoot! Haha!

The Deer Lady was one we heard growing up. There’s a lot of representation of that now. Stephen Graham Jones did the most brutal Deer Lady in his book, "The Only Good Indians". Reservation Dogs did, probably the sexiest, Deer Lady on their show. So those stories are getting their run in the mainstream now, I would urge you to check those out.

There’s a scourge of right wing videos on YouTube trying to justify their points of view using Native Americans, which isn’t cool; saying that there were prophetic Hopi paintings in caves showing trump and musk wearing red hats as saviors. That BS is something we always gotta be cognizant of and filter out.

There is also a segment of Natives who would rather not have those stories told to the outside world. I’ve already gotten flack for sharing my stories by that segment, but what can a writer do but write his truth?

What does “home” mean to you now: Iowa, Minneapolis, the Meskwaki Nation, or something less physical?

I feel at home wherever I lay my head down. Attending the Des Moines Book Festival was like coming home.

Not so much the Meskwaki Settlement. They’ve been cracking down on us "Descendants / Unenrolled Members" out there. Remember when I told you I wasn’t welcome out there and got bullied growing up? It has really come to a head now. Greed has a lot to do with that, they gotta dis-enroll us and kick us out of the Settlement so they can have all that casino, cigarette, and THC money all to themselves.

There’s a movement brewing now that’s tackling that very issue of tribes dis-enrolling and banishing descendants. The documentary film, "You’re No Indian" is shining a much-needed light on that problem. [The problem] It’s basically another form of genocide.

What do you listen to when you write? 

I can't do music when I write, though I do listen to ambient soundscapes to create atmosphere. Ossa Coronata was my go-to band for my latest project; their soundscapes really capture the eerie ghostly church-in-the-woods vibe. I love them!

One time you told me about a gal that you knew who was a strong believer in Shadow People. One night at your house "something" knocked over a fan. Can you tell me about that? What do you associate that to?

There's a new Testament song called, "Shadow People" that totally whisked me back to that time. I believe some people can see things that most people aren't conditioned to see; much like children who can see things that adults can't. Perhaps it may have been a past trauma she experienced, but she claimed that she was cursed. I have no explanation, that incident was an anomaly. She is no longer a part of my life so I don't know if she still sees the Shadow People. She's definitely not alone in seeing them. I included a bit of that in my last novel in a brief, disturbing scene.

Actually, I think my guitar playing buddy Jas Spargur can see them - or ghosts, one of the two.

Do characters in your books sometimes reflect real people you've met in your life?

Oh god yes! Haha! My last book was 90% Autofiction with my life in my band Inhale the Ellipses. I just had a dream last night about the "Rick" character and myself beginning to write songs again for a new project. The old feelings came back and I wasn't so sure it was a good idea! Haha!

The newest book, The Pipelayer has a lot of characters that came from real life, since it spawned from my time working in that field. Inspiration comes from the people you know.

Tell us what The Pipelayer is about and what inspired you to write it.

Ah well, it is about Gaston Johnson, a Native American Pipelayer from Des Moines who is a descendant of the Fox Tribe in Te Ma, Iowa. The company he works for, Price Plumbing, has a job on the Fox Tribal Settlement: a place he never felt accepted. Circumstances and tragedies lead to him to discovering something truly f-ed up while digging underground.

The story switches back-and-forth between the present and 1989. So there some flashbacks that have some of my earliest memories in life. 1989 was a pivotal year for me and I wanted to pay tribute to that time. I had a great time writing it. Also, I should point out that the Fox Tribe is a pseudonym for Meskwaki. It worked for the story, I have some Meskwaki and Sauk words in there and I thought it be classier to protect the names of the innocent and not-so-innocent. Haha!

Now Playing: Percolator Stomp by the Apemen

Out of the Shadows: A Conversation with the Phantom AD

By day, he’s a substitute teacher keeping classrooms in line - but when the sun drops and nighttime's shadow prevails, he becomes something else entirely. Draped in a flowing cape, crowned with a wild afro, and channeling the spirit of late-night creature features, The Phantom emerges from the darkness as a solitary pulse of chaos. 

His sound - what he calls Ghoulish Rock N’ Roll - is a fever-dream fusion of surf riffs, garage grit, and rockabilly swagger, all soaked in the eerie glow of vintage horror. It’s not for Squares, man - It's a midnight transmission from the strange side of the dial, where bats swoop from the skies, monsters dance and bones rattle. 

He’s a musical anomaly who fell in love with rock ’n’ roll at an early age. Elvis Presley, The Big Bopper, and Jerry Lee Lewis formed the soundtrack of his childhood, shaping a sound he would never truly leave behind. Even as a teenager, when punk rock took hold, that foundation remained intact. Bands like Circle Jerks, T.S.O.L., and The Cramps helped define who he was becoming, while artists such as Screaming Lord Sutch and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs added the final, distinctive touches to his musical identity.

From his website:

My name is Harley Isaac Rother, known to many as The Phantom. The day I was born, the hospital echoed with the defiant sound of Rock N’ Roll, - It’s been obsession ever since.

When I was in Kindergarten, every kid in the class was assigned to bring in a song to share. Drawn by the sinister laugh that starts the tune and the good time surf rock beat, I brought in Wipe Out by The Safaris. I assumed every kid would bring in something rockin’ and it would be a wild party. I was shocked when I was the only kid who brought in a Rock N’ Roll song tune. It was at the moment that I knew I was different.

He's bringing his legion of one to Des Moines on June 14. He is playing at The Haunt - a basement bar located at 500 Locust Street in the East Village. Only 65 tickets are available, and by today's standards, they are cheap. So act fast! This event is already half way sold out. You can purchase tickets here. If you live outside of Iowa, his tour schedule is posted above. We here at Blue Banana cannot emphasize enough the Bona-Fidelity of this show. 

I dusted off the Ouija Board, conjured the Phantom for a minute, and asked him a few questions. 

Who - or what - is Phantom AD?

I am The Phantom A.D. the purveyor of Ghoulish Rock ‘N’ Roll music. I release rock n roll music on LP, CD and streaming and tour the country. I’ll be doing shows in at least 40 different cities this year in the North, East, South and West. I’m my own booking agent, manager and record label. 100% independent!

Tell us about yourself. What drives you? What are your guilty pleasures? What celebrity was your high school crush? 

My real name is Harley Isaac Rother and I make music as The Phantom A.D. I always loved rock n roll like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and I didn't ever hear much of anyone playing that type of music in a way that felt exciting - so that’s been my mission - making high energy rock n roll but for today. If you come to my show you’ll see I don't do a single slow song and I’ll be drenched in sweat when I’m finished. And hopefully you will be too! The other aspect is to combine all that with a classic horror appeal. Like Bela Lugosi but with a guitar. 

Hey this is four questions in one! That's ok. My biggest guilty pleasure is probably collecting stuff. I like old toys, music and horror movie memorabilia. I also like competition reality shows like Beast Games and Squid Games Challenge.

Chyna (RIP!) is my celebrity crush. She was dangerous and sexy. The perfect combo. 

Tell me about a specific paranormal experience you've had. 

A fortune teller cast a spell on me which led me to be attacked by monsters and transform into The Phantom. It’s documented in my music video for Heeby Jeebies.

Monsters are often metaphors - fear, isolation, transformation. What do they represent to you?

To me they're just cool! Everyone loves animals and monsters are like extreme animals. Gorillas are cool but a giant gorilla is even cooler!

A lot of horror deals with fear - what’s something that genuinely unsettles you in real life?

Poverty and injustice. I’ve been blessed to travel a lot in the last few years and in every American city there's people sleeping on the street, ghettos and visible desperation. It doesn't have to be like that. In Japan and a lot of European countries those things don’t exist. I’m constantly donating to people’s Go Fund Me's because they have medical bills they can't pay for. Again that's a fixable issue that other countries don't have but we as a society choose to let people fend for themselves if they get sick and don't have insurance that covers it. ANYWAY

Your music, while rooted with the Safaris, and the Cramps, still  has that kitschy vibe to it, like "Monster's Holiday" by Buck Owens. Who would you say is the one band or performer that has influenced you the most? 

Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs! I loved Wooly Bully the first time I heard it and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They have tons of great songs. Everything they did was fun from the name to the costumes to the music. Sam did the most with the least. He wasn't a highly skilled musician yet he created a totally unique and recognizable sound on his organ. You can hear that Wooly Bully beat on a lot of his songs like JuJu Hand, Ring Dang Doo and others. He also has a song called The Phantom that influenced me in an obvious way. 

There’s a line from Lux Interior: “I’m not a musician, I’m an entertainer.” Do you relate to that at all, or do you see Phantom AD as something different? 

I relate to the entertainer part because I think people find my live show entertaining and that's my goal. But I am also a musician. I’ve been playing guitar my whole life and it's important to me to be at top level musically. The Phantom A.D. is very guitar centric and I’m influenced by great guitar players ranging from Dick Dale to Django Rhineheart.

   Phantom AD says, "Monsters are like extreme animals!" 

If you could score a movie about any cryptid or monster, what would it be?

Bigfoot!

Similarly, What real-world legend or cryptid deserves a Phantom AD soundtrack?

Well there's a song on my new album called Even Sasquatch Wants to Rock which will be coming out in May. It's a true story about the time Sasquatch joined me on stage because he wanted to play ghoulish rock n roll. Satch is a killer guitar player!

I feel like I should ask about Screaming Jay Hawkins, but honestly man? I've got nothing. He's so damn good, though, right? 

Yeah, I love him. We have the same birthday, July 18th. He famously had 57 kids and I never met my biological father, so ya never know… 

You're playing in Des Moines on June 14. Those of us who are attending your show - what do we need to know? 

It's at an actual haunted house called The Haunt - or maybe it's a haunted bar? The only thing you need is to prepare to have a good time! That and you will need a ticket which I would recommend buying now at thephantomad.com/the-haunt . There's only room for 65 people and as of April 10th, 20 tickets have already sold and the show isn't until June 14 - so this will sell out! Get tickets now!

Now Playing: "Halloween 4" - We Are the Asteroid 

Blue Banana Gets Weird with Jude Rawlins of Pink Flag

Some artists make films. Others chase visions. Jude Rawlins belongs firmly to the latter camp. He's a British-Irish filmmaker, musician, and multidisciplinary creator whose work moves comfortably between mysticism, underground music culture, and experimental cinema.

Born in Birmingham, England, in 1972 and now working between New York and Iowa, Rawlins first emerged through music as the singer-guitarist and principal songwriter for the Subterraneans and later as a collaborator with the Lene Lovich Band. But sound was only the beginning. His filmmaking would evolve into something more esoteric - a search for meaning through image, myth, and forgotten histories.

His 2009 feature Albion Rising resurrected visionary poet William Blake in a dreamlike meditation on art and prophecy, while Songs of Alchemy explored the angelic communications of Renaissance occultist John Dee, blurring the line between historical drama and spiritual inquiry. 

His award-winning short The Divine Image captured the attention of festival audiences, earning the Ken Russell Award at the Edinburgh Fringe - an apt honor for a filmmaker unafraid of the surreal.

Rawlins’ projects often orbit cultural outsiders and visionary figures, from reinterpretations of Faust to tributes honoring filmmaker Derek Jarman. Even his early life hints at a lifelong fascination with imagination and exploration - winning an art prize at age seven for a painting of the Skylab space station and excelling as a youth chess champion.

Part filmmaker, part musician, part modern mystic, Jude Rawlins continues to create work that feels less like conventional storytelling and more like transmissions from the borderlands between art, history, and the unseen.

His art is coveted, whether it's film, ink or music. Once while living in New York, he was featured on Handsome Dick Manitoba's podcast. Cyndi Lauper heard it and tried to get him to join her band, but Jude was unable to commit because he had the wrong type of visa at the time. "One thing leads to another," he told me. And now he's in Des Moines. 

Pink Flag

Pink Flag is the name of Jude's current project, a band that is as much Des Moines as it is Birmingham, spiced with flavors from New York, Los Angeles, and regions all throughout Europe. The name comes from the 1977 album by Wire, "Pink Flag." It fits the aesthetic perfectly - Wire is considered a highly influential art-punk band from the UK and well... we can see exactly how this lines up.  

"Pink Flag" the album shattered punk’s rulebook by stripping rock music down to its barest, sharpest most skeletal form. Packed with 21 songs in roughly 35 minutes, the album rejects excess in favor of precision - many tracks end before they fully settle in, turning riffs and lyrics into fleeting, almost conceptual statements.

How does this line up in regard to Jude's new band? Well, I'm excited to find out. 

 

Pink Flag, fresh off tour with Devo, the B-52s and Lene Lovich, consists of Dani Warsdottir on vocals, Jude Rawlins on guitars, Beth Spaniel on bass, and Celestino Ramirez on drums. They will be playing this Saturday night (April 11) at Maggie's Rumble Room in Des Moines. They will be accompanying Iowa's own sonic warlords Jacob County and the Damaged Goods. 

Then they play again on June 13 at Locals alongside Toon Smokes and Bhagwan. 

Jude was kind enough to let me ask him a flurry of questions ranging from what his musical influences are, to his thoughts on Emergence Theory and other quantum concepts, and his interactions with the paranormal. Yeah. We went all over the place with this one. 

Hey ho! Let's go!

Before we get weird — can you tell readers a little about your musical background and what kind of music you make?

 My major influences are punk and post-punk and Sixties proto-punk, but I have always listened to everything except metal and jazz and shitty manufactured pop music. When I was germinating the concept for Pink Flag I was listening to a lot of Killing Joke, Wire, Gang of Four, and the first Siouxsie and the Banshees album The Scream. I’d been listening to this music forever but it started to make a new kind of sense to me. I loved American bands like X, Mission of Burma, and The Adolescents. I also rediscovered bands like Crass and The Poison Girls, Flux of Pink Indians, etc. For me there’s a musical tradition that includes all of those things, but it starts with The Stooges and ends with The Smiths. The Queen is Dead is the full stop, there’s loads of music that came after that I love, but nothing I would really honestly call an influence. I do think we have a kinship with a lot of current bands, like Amyl and the Sniffers, Tropical Fuck Storm, Wolf Alice, Wet Leg, Courtney Barnett, Sharon Van Etten. Right now is a really great time for music, the best in decades. But it still all comes down to side one of Funhouse by The Stooges. The four most perfect rock songs ever captured in a studio. That’s still the high watermark. That’s still the one to beat, but it will never be rivalled.

Do you feel like creativity and the mysterious are connected? In other words, does exploring the unknown influence the way you write or perform music?

 I think creativity at its very heart is an exploration, one of the main reasons we become artists is to try to make sense of things. And we never succeed, but we keep going, we keep reaching, like the last paragraph of The Great Gatsby. That’s why I’ve never liked U2, their songs always just sound like unsolicited advice to me. They exude self-confidence, which is the dullest thing you can ever do as an artist. Take the Ramones or Joy Division or Nirvana, their power came from their fragility, their self-doubt that everyone can relate to. They looked like they could snap like a twig at any minute, yet they just soared instead, like lightning in a bottle. That’s why there are so many sonnets and poems and love songs in the world. Love is the very center of the human condition, and yet it’s still a mystery to us. Without art, it would be inexpressible. The same way nothing can only be expressed through mathematics, the number zero. Without a language or a form, a mode of expression, everything worth our time and attention quickly becomes very big and complex.

You mentioned having witnessed incidents “from the spooky to the downright weird.” What’s one experience that really stuck with you?

When I was a teenager I had a close friend who took her own life. About a year or so after if happened I was sitting on a wall in front of the local library with another friend, and across the parking lot we saw this girl walking down the street, and we both immediately recognized her as our dead friend. Her hair, her clothes, the way she walked, everything. We exchanged a look of complete shock, then jumped to our feet and bolted across the parking lot. She passed behind a wall just before we reached her, and when we got there, there was no one there. Like, nobody, the street was deserted. We still talk about it to this day. I don’t believe in ghosts, but the discovery of Higg-Bosun opened the door for me to Multiverse Theory and the whole world of Quantum Mechanics as something worth exploration. If you are serious about wanting to understand the universe then you have to take Einstein and Stephen Hawking seriously.

 

You also mentioned ideas like emergence theory, quantum echoes, and Hermetic concepts. What first drew you to those ways of thinking about reality?

It all started for me with William Blake. As a choirboy I was required to sing hymns on a Sunday, which are all basically the same. Then one day we were singing “Jerusalem” and it was like a thunderbolt. I started reading Blake and everything changed. I discovered the Sex Pistols around the same time, and the relationship between William Blake’s urge to create your own systems or become enslaved by the systems of others’ and Johnny Rotten saying you don’t need permission for anything, was almost immediately obvious to me. I became interested in Alchemy because of Carl Jung, who thought the Enlightenment was too quick to throw everything away, that there was still stuff to learn from the Ancient Wisdom. I found myself disappearing down the same literary rabbit holes as people like Patti Smith and Jaz Coleman, so I knew I was on to something. I don’t know if Emergence Theory will turn out to be correct, but I feel it is by far the best we have at present.

If you could play music at one truly mysterious place - Area 51, Skinwalker Ranch, Easter Island, or somewhere else - where would you choose and why?

 

There’s so many. I’ve recorded inside the Teufelsberg in Berlin but I’d love to play a show there. Maybe in front of Newgrange in Ireland, or on the steps of the Sacre Couer in Paris. Or in the volcanic caves beneath Naples in Italy. Part of me really badly wants to play in the Badlands, but another part of me thinks we should just leave it alone.

 

 What was the specific moment in your life when you realized the world might be more supernatural than we’re told? What happened?

 I don’t really think of anything as “supernatural”. I think everything is implicitly natural, whether we understand it yet or not. But I do find it pompous an arrogant when people claim the righteousness of their position, be they religious fanatics or atheists. The only certainty is uncertainty, and one of the most valuable life lessons is coming to terms with that. People want to believe in an afterlife because, quite reasonably, they are afraid of dying, because of the simple fear of the unknown, which gives us a healthy respect for life until you interfere with it and start laying down beliefs instead of suppositions. To me, spirituality is the opposite of materialism, but I can’t think of anything more materialistic than bribing people with promises of everlasting life. You’re just exploiting their deepest fears. We have a need for certainty that can never be met. I suppose that makes agnosticism seem like the most sensible proposition, but then an agnostic is still an unbeliever, so it’s just atheism without the vitriol towards religion. It’s none of my business what other people choose to believe, or why, or how. I just think that life is the most valuable thing we have, it might be our only time-off from non-existence, so I think the right to life is the most existentially important thing that we should all agree on. Thou shalt not kill. I can live and let live with anyone who truly believes that.

After everything you’ve experienced or thought about over the years, what’s your personal feeling about that supernatural side of reality? Are we dealing with unknown phenomena, something paranormal, or something else entirely?

For me, unknown phenomena, 100%. We may figure it out, we may not. There are things we know and things we don’t. It’s fine to have theories about the stuff we don’t know, that’s how we may eventually get to understand them, but anyone who claims to know anything about them is actually committing a form of blasphemy in my opinion. Ironically, the Gnostic scriptures, the true historical basis for Christianity, agree with that position entirely. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene warns against following leaders, that all prophets are false. There will always be things we don’t know or fully comprehend, and we just have to accept that. But when there is empirical evidence, then that should have precedent. For example, if we were to see water flowing uphill, natural law says that is impossible because Gravity is one of the few constants in the universe. So if it were really flowing uphill, what would the best available explanation be? It would be that it is actually flowing downhill (which doesn’t break natural law), but backwards through time (which, and standby for this, ALSO doesn’t break natural law.) As outlandish as that sounds, once you obey the law of Gravity, and you get into Emergence Theory’s ideas about time not being linear outside of our experience of it, which is what creates Quantum Echoes (you think of someone and they are the very next person to call you, or you remember and episode of an old TV show and the next time you catch it that is the episode on air) whereby the future influences the present as much as the past does, but we experience it only when we reach that point in the future, which we call Déjà vu. Is it the right explanation? Who knows, but it’s a lot better than any theory that doesn’t follow the empirical evidence.

 

If you could witness one unexplained phenomenon with your own eyes—Bigfoot, a UFO landing, a ghost, or something else—what would you choose?

I’d take the UFO, definitely. When we were on tour last year we went hundreds of miles out of our way on a dodgy tire to see Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, because Close Encounters of the Third Kind is such a wonderful, inspiring and hopeful movie. It’s a statistical probability that we are not alone in the universe, and I would love to know for sure.

Finally, what are you currently working on musically, and where can people find your work?

We’re just putting the finishing touches to our debut album, and we’re booking shows wherever will have us. The best place to find info and links is via the website, www.pinkflag.band - that will lead you to Facebook, Bandcamp, YouTube etc.

Now Playing: "Next Big Thing" - The Dictators (RIP Ross)